


Because we can

by AssumeEveryoneWithASwordIsQueer



Series: Because we can [2]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29177838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssumeEveryoneWithASwordIsQueer/pseuds/AssumeEveryoneWithASwordIsQueer
Relationships: Guinevere/Arthur Pendragon
Series: Because we can [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2132733
Kudos: 2





	Because we can

He remembered at homecoming in a small town in Middle of nowhere California, 1995. He was a freshman, it was the first and last school dance he attended. It started as flashes of what felt like memories of a dream behind his eyes whenever he blinked. It ended with him seizing on the floor as his past life took the wheel.

Arthur woke up in the hospital eight hours later with his parents, or at least the people who brought his body into the world at his bedside. He didn’t go back to that school, and he was never the same. He watched every movie, read every book, listened to every song. Everything there was about swords in lakes and stones, about mystical women lurking in the water, of knights, and Holy cups and promises of peace and unity.

Arthur’s body changed when he was fifteen, shifting. He got about two inches shorter, his hair got lighter, turning blonde where it was once dark brown until he finally blamed the summer sun and his mom let him bleach it. His eyes, once vibrantly blue, became such a dark brown they were once black. He found himself not wanting to stand out in the physical sense, like he needed the protection. Wearing less and less bright colors.

He got in a fist fight that broke his nose when he was sixteen, but he knocked the guy out. Arthur had never known, nor learned how to fight before then. Despite becoming unrecognizable to the people around him, he recognized himself better than ever when he could stand to look at his reflection. He never told anyone. Surly, they would think he’d gone mad.

Perhaps he was, because when Arthur was eighteen, he long left his dreams of becoming an engineer behind. He applied to some colleges in England. He would’ve preferred Wales, but he failed French and wasn’t about to try learning Welsh to go to school there and drown in debt in a foreign country. He switched his major to Mythology and preservation library science and got into Oxford.

It was a hiking trip and a dare from a drunk friend when an equally drunk Arthur yanked a sword from a boulder. He kept it, and swore to never use it, but he found himself taking fencing classes and sword play until he learned to fight. One day, the blade shattered on the helmet of his sparring partner.

He didn’t sleep that night. He failed his finals the next day and left with a 2.5 GPA, barely clinging to his degree. Arthur stopped being able to sleep longer than an hour or two. He was put on antidepressants, but they didn’t help him. An empty void was forming in his chest and it was not going away anytime soon.

But he knew it would a little bit. He knew because he watched the faces of people to see if he recognized someone he had never met nor seen in this life Arthur would not rest until his queen and his knights, his son, his brothers, were home again too. There were only seven billion people in the world, it wouldn’t be that hard, would it? 

He met Guinevere,  _ re _ met her, in a McDonalds in England. He was on a research mission of an ancient castle. Mythology and Archaeology graduates from all around the world were on it, Arthur was lucky to have even been considered for it. Getting to go was nothing short of a miracle. It was a lunch break, and he went to the closest and cheapest place, diet be damned.

He had six chips in his mouth when she walked in. He had never seen her before, though her jacket designated her as being on the team whose shift started an hour before Arthur’s ended. He recognized everything all the way up to the way she walked and her only having one double pierced ear. He hadn’t meant to stare at her as she walked up to the counter, but something deep in his bones was screaming at him to go talk to her, because that was his wife, from another life, but still undeniably _ her.  _

When she turned around to find a booth, her bright green eyes made contact with his. A connection sparked, and he watched Jenny’s eyes roll back in her head right before the same happened to him. Their life together, once again. 

Guinever got her bearings a lot faster than Arthur did, as in a mess of baggy clothes, bony limbs and long, stringy dyed purple hair, she ran over to his table and slid into the booth right across from him,

“Hi, this seems so weird, but is your name Artie, or Art, something like that? I think we’ve met somewhere, I mean- obviously we’re on the same project but…” she trailed off, frazzled and out of breath, and she’d unconsciously reached out, now gripping his wrist. He smirked.

“Arthur Penn, and I do believe you and I have met before- Just...not y’know, in this millennia, or life. Is your name some variation of oh, I don’t know…  _ Guinevere _ ”, he asked shakily, hoping the name rang a bell. If her eyebrows shooting up were anything to go by, it most definitely had.

“I’m Jenny Leo. Yes. I..I’ve been looking and I don’t know what for, and it’s like- I kind of feel”.. She trailed off, sighing in defeat. Arthur offered a chicken nugget. He didn’t know what else to say or do with her. It was a bit startling to meet your beloved wife you almost burned at the stake again, 1487 years later, in a fast food restaurant in the middle of England.

“A puzzle with nearly all the pieces missing?” he asked tentatively, his brain crying out for her not to leave again, though it was technically  _ him _ that left. He had left the living world, after all.

“Yes!” Guinever exclaimed, loudly enough that half the establishment started at the two of them for a good ten seconds. She had been raised by a single dad with five older brothers in New Jersey. She didn’t know quiet. Her memories had come much more smoothly than Arthur’s.

“So… I’m broke.. lIke broke broke, but can I take you out to dinner anyway?” he asked, brushing a strand of hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear, a habit from over a thousand years ago. Was that weird for having just met again?

No, she was already holding his hand in a McDonalds in middle of nowhere, England. If anything, she was the weird one this time around.

“Sure”. Guinever paid that night after much protest from Arthur.

They got married six months later in 2003, and began their unrelenting search for the knights and their family, if they still had family, and neither would rest until they found everyone. Even if it took nearly two decades.


End file.
